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Censorship at Colleges

What’s being taught in colleges and universities about energy and energy issues?

This is the third article on this subject.

While the previous two articles discussed college professors in general, and the Great Courses specifically, this will highlight professors at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, who have outlawed free speech during their course. This came to light when a student’s letter was published on The College Fix web site.

Professors Rebecca Laroche, Wendy Haggren and Eileen Skahill, told students that there was to be no discussion of climate change during their course, either in class or between students during on-line forums.

Infrastructure associated with fossil fuels

The class, Medical Humanities in the Digital Age is to examine the health and medical consequences of climate change.

Several students had expressed concern after watching the first on-line lecture on the effects of climate change.

Students were told to keep silent about opposing views or drop the course.

Further restricting students’ ability to obtain a broad and diverse education, the students were told they could only use reference material that had been “peer-reviewed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).” The professors provided a link to IPCC material.

Obviously, anything that had been approved by the IPCC had to support the hypothesis of manmade climate change.

Additionally, the course syllabus indicated the course would study the health effects of fracking.

0 Replies to “Censorship at Colleges”

It was once academic suicide to discuss Continental Drift (the idea that Earth is composed of plates that move across the Earth). Tracking of atomic bomb testing by seismometers during the Cold War revealed that the Earth is composed of plates and analysis of magnetic surveys of the seafloor conducted during World War II eventually showed that these plates move. It is presently academic suicide to discuss alternative ideas about the cause of changes in Earth’s climate except by the “IPCC accepted” carbon dioxide as cause model. What kind of discovery will emerge that will dispel this model, I do not know. But I do know that by studying the past, rigid thinking on any subject eventually breaks down. This is what I teach my students. This type of academic “group think” is not new.

Thanks for your comment. Yes, group think is not new, but it is very unfortunate. Colleges and Universities should be the last place to condemn ideas. It’s amazing that some colleges will countenance the teaching of communism and radicalization of the United States, but will not allow discussion of climate change.

I was not surprised about the authoritarian attitude concerning climate change that you mentioned in your latest post. I have been involved with energy education, writing and training since the 1980s. In previous decades I saw schools (near coal mines) where the syllabus was skewed in favour of coal mining – discussion about the environmental problems rarely occurred..At other education establishments I have seen students receive lectures in courses that were batantly pro-nuclear energy. But in the UK we are now seeing many schools and (even leading) universities removing all lectures on coal and also other fossil fuels from the syllabus. Students are not allowed to make up their own minds about the use of differing fuels. The courses are being edited to remove content that is considered politically incorrect. But no-one is willing (or often able) to criticise these (educational) developments.

Thanks for your comments. The elimination of free speech and ideas from campuses is a serious problem, profoundly against concepts of freedom on which our countries, the US and UK, are based. I hope my articles will get enough attention to encourage everyone to encourage honest debate and the free flow of ideas.

In writing his novel “1984” in 1949, George Orwell anticipated “big brother’s” control over all though and privacy of the individual. It was rendered impossible NOT to join the accepted way, and those who disobeyed were severely punished. Part of the method of control was to re-define the meaning of words and phrases. The three slogans of the party in control were WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
The mantra “climate change is disastrous and all human-caused” fits right in.
“1984” did not end well.